


Eddie I've Got Your Number (Don't Change Your Number)

by Amuly



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-17
Updated: 2020-05-17
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24227371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amuly/pseuds/Amuly
Summary: After they race Eddie to the ER, Richie is left holding Eddie's cell phone. As he goes through it, he finds out a lot more than he thought he would about his newly-remembered love-of-his-life, Eddie Kaspbrak.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 55
Kudos: 543





	Eddie I've Got Your Number (Don't Change Your Number)

They had left all their phones in Mike’s car. Richie had forgot, because he had been busy holding Eddie’s organs inside his body with his bare fucking hands. He’d forgotten pretty much everything besides _Eddie, Eddie, please-_

But now he was sitting in the hospital waiting room, blood on his hands and shirt, blood on his cracked glasses lens, blood under his fingernails, on his pants.

It was Eddie’s blood. All of it. It was Eddie’s.

 _Eddie would be freaking out right now_ , Richie thought. _He’d be ranting about AIDS, and what the fuck, scrub your hands you idiot, you’re going to rub your eye and get my blood in your eye and you don’t know what diseases I have! What if I had hepatitis and you have a hangnail and my blood gets into your blood-_

Richie bent his head, laughing at the panicked Eddie voice monologuing him inside his own skull. He’d only been around the adult-version of the asshole for twenty-four hours, but already he could hear him perfectly in his mind. Reproduce the exact cadence of his voice, the pitch, the speed at which he spoke…

Richie’s laughter turned to sobs. He knocked his glasses up to his forehead, shoving the heels of his palms into his eyes as he cried. A broken, horrible moan wrenched its way from his throat. Oh, God. Eddie. _Eddie_.

“Richie?”

 _What-_ Bev. Just Bev. Not a nurse, or an OR surgeon. Richie relaxed, just barely. She was standing there in her blood-soaked tank top and jeans, holding something out at him. Two somethings, actually.

“Here. Mike and me are going to drive back to the motel, grab a change of clothes for everyone.”

His phone. That’s what Bev was holding out to him, pinched between bloody fingers. But not just his phone. He took his from Bev’s hand and then looked up at her as she held out the second phone to him.

“It’s Eddie’s,” she managed to choke out, voice cracking at the end. She stifled a sob, wiping at her eyes with her free hand.

She didn’t need to say any more than that. Richie took the phone from her, cupping it in both hands like it was some precious thing (which it was, how could it not be, it was _Eddie’s_ ). Bev leaned down to give Richie a quick hug, and he reached one arm up to hug her back, numbly, Eddie’s phone clenched in his other hand. Then Bev hurried out of the ER and Richie was left alone again. As usual.

Richie’s phone lit up as he fumbled the two of them around, trying to decide what to do with them. Text from Steve, all caps, wondering _WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU._

 _PICK UP YOUR FUCKING PHONE_.

Numbly Richie scrolled through his lock screen, reading the messages from Steve decreasing in severity as he went further back in time. There were twitter notifications, e-mails, a fucking message from Grindr, cool, great, that’s what he wanted, right now, sitting in the ER waiting to see if the love of his fucking life was going to live or die: a shot of some bumfuck Maine homo’s dick. Richie lifted his hips and shoved his phone into his pocket without unlocking it. All that shit could wait. Eddie was back there, in the ER, and Richie still had no fucking idea which way it was going to go. Steve’s mental breakdown and missed tour dates in Reno suddenly seemed like the most banal bullshit he could imagine.

Eddie’s phone was nicer than his, the little fuck. It was in some super durable case, because of course it fucking was, but… Richie peeled back the case and peered at the back. Rose gold. Rose fucking gold. Little Eddie Kaspbrak grew up and became the kind of guy who bought the biggest, newest rose-gold iPhone every year.

Another sob wrenched out of Richie’s throat as he clenched his fist tight around Eddie’s phone, putting that Otterbox case through its paces. God, _God_ , he had missed that little boy so fucking much, missed that man he would become without ever even _knowing_ him, without knowing he _was_ missing him. Richie pressed Eddie’s phone to his forehead as his teeth clenched, mouth drawn into a terrible grimace of pain as he sobbed some more.

But the thing about the ER waiting room was, time kept passing, and you kept waiting. Eventually Richie’s tears dried up because there was only so long he could cry for, especially his third or fourth cry of the day. And Eddie still wasn’t _here_ , and nobody had come out to tell him what was _happening_ , so presumably it was still… or he hadn’t…

 _Schrödinger’s Eddie_.

Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Richie again—laughter he knew would turn to sobs, again, if he didn’t preempt it. In a desperate bid to distract himself Richie clicked the side button on Eddie’s iPhone, illuminating it.

His lockscreen was the fucking default lockscreen on the iPhone: a watercolor mix of aquas and oranges.

Who the fuck’s life was so fucking empty and devoid of personality that they had the default lockscreen on their iPhone? Even little old grandmas who didn’t understand how to use the computers would figure it out enough to get their grandkids’ picture set on their lockscreen.

There were dozens of notifications waiting for Eddie on the lockscreen, but he didn’t have previews of the messages turned on. Just names and apps showed up. There were a dozen from Myra—the wife, apparently—and several from other names Richie didn’t know. A Frank, a John, a Lisa. Colleagues, maybe. Friends? Unlikely. Losers didn’t have friends. Losers only had each other.

Dozens, if not a hundred, e-mail notifications lit up the screen, but just with the name of the sender, nothing more. They were probably all just work e-mails, but suddenly Richie was desperate to read them. Desperate for any insight into Eddie’s life. Especially if…

Richie blinked hard, willing himself not to cry. How could he possibly? He had to have cried all his tears out at this point, surely.

It felt like all he had of Eddie. All he might… _ever_ …

Richie glanced up, scanning the ER. Still nothing. He thumbed at the side button of Eddie’s iPhone again, squinting as it brought up the passcode screen, asking him for his six digits. Fuck.

Eddie wouldn’t have anything obvious. Not Mr. Risk-Analyst. No 111111, no 000000. Not 727796 (PASSWO-). Couldn’t be his birthday, surely, or Myra’s (if Richie even knew such a thing). So what? What numbers would Eddie type in every day, hundreds of times a day?

Feeling like he was on autopilot, Richie tapped out, without really thinking, 699238-.

The phone unlocked. Richie gaped.

Eddie’s home phone number. That’s what that had been. 6992383. Richie’s fingers remembered it, having dialed it every fucking day of his youth, ages nine through seventeen.

His background was the same abstract watercolor background that was the default for the phone. Richie wanted to cry, or laugh, or laugh until he cried, or cry until he laughed. But his eyes _burned_ with all the crying (and exhaustion, he’d been up twenty-four fucking hours, maybe some of it was that), so Richie didn’t do any of those things and instead started snooping through Eddie’s phone without any real thought to his privacy.

The first thing he should do was probably text—or better yet, _call_ —Myra and let her know her husband was… what? Okay? Richie didn’t _know_ he was. He might be dead. Injured? That could be worse: it wasn’t like Richie had an update on his condition, one way or another. It was probably better to wait until there was news. So Richie told himself. So Richie didn’t know if he really believed, but it gave him enough cover to ignore the text messages for now.

E-mail, notes app… Richie thumbed through Eddie’s phone, taking in all the tidily organized folders with their perfectly logical titles. There was a _Finance_ folder with all his many banking apps; a _Work_ folder will all sorts of… risk-analyst type apps, Richie supposed. _House_ folder contained an app for his alarm system, Nest thermostat, Nextdoor, utilities, and more. A _Travel_ folder with map apps, ride shares, flight trackers… Richie thumbed open the flight tracker app. It had Eddie’s flight out to Derry (Bangor, actually) entered in. There was no return flight.

Eddie had packed way too fucking much—Richie had wormed his way into Eddie’s room that morning (yesterday morning, because now it was morning of the next day. Mid-morning. He’d been up more than twenty-four hours, after the shit night sleep he’d gotten in the Derry Inn… Fuck he was tired. Fuck he was wired. Richie squeezed his eyes shut and open, like that would somehow soothe the scratchiness of his eyes) and teased him about the two oversized suitcases packed to the gills, the maximally-sized carry-on suitcase, the backpack with the toiletries kit and wallet and everything else he might have stored in his fanny pack when they were kids. Had Eddie been escaping?

No return flight… had he packed up? Did that explain all the suitcases for what they thought was going to be a weekend reunion trip with their friends? Had he left behind his entire life, brought everything he needed with him with no intent of ever going back?

Or had he just not known when the reunion was going to be over and figured he’d book a last-minute flight whenever he needed it and get a good deal on his ticket. Brought two-hundred pounds of luggage because he was Eddie and that’s how he traveled, no matter if it was a weekend trip or two weeks international.

Richie had no way of knowing, because he didn’t _know_ Eddie. Didn’t know his life.

But he had known Eddie’s phone passcode.

And now he had Eddie’s phone unlocked in his hands.

Richie opened the mail app and started scrolling through. They mostly looked like work e-mails: there were a lot from what was obviously a work listserv, announcements like _Scheduled Steam Outage_ and _Monthly Fire Drill_ and _Training Session on 2016 ACA LTC Regulations_. Richie scrolled past all those, looking for more personal ones. Thumbing over to the side, the G-Mail menu slid over and showed a dozen different sub-folders. There it was. There were folders labeled _Tax, House, Myra, Office, Clients, Medical_ …

None of that told Richie anything about who Eddie _was_. Not really. Just about what his job was, what he did to earn money. And none of it really gave him a glimpse of the man he knew, even if just for two days. Richie wanted to see that man in this phone.

Richie navigated to the photoroll. Surely that would have more personality than his e-mails. He didn’t consider beforehand what he might encounter when he opened it.

The answer, at first, wasn’t much. Screenshots of digital tickets and maps, largely. Clearly taken in case the internet was unavailable for whatever reason. Classic Eddie, but it wasn’t _enough_. Richie scrolled further back, mostly finding _documentation_ more than anything that was really a _photo_. Receipts, ticket screenshots, that sort of thing. What looked like food and kitchen photos, which he couldn’t figure out at first. There was one of a food truck, shaky, like Eddie had shoved his way through the front window and snapped a photo as fast as he could. There was one of a plate of food with a hamburger on it. One taken through… looks like taken through a kitchen porthole window.

Richie realized what it was in a rush of fondness so intense he worried he might start crying again. They were _health code violations_. Or, what Eddie obviously _considered_ to be health code violations. Or pictures for future bad Yelp reviews, blasting the restaurants for whatever slightly Eddie had hyper-focused on that day. Richie wanted to laugh until he was sick, but he knew it would just end with him crying, so he settled for holding Eddie’s phone tight in both hands and laughing softly, throat tight.

Richie kept scroll back, hoping to find another piece of Eddie’s personality, waiting for him to puzzle out through the photos he had left behind. More restaurant pictures, some receipts, screenshots of boarding passes, that sort of thing. Documentation and bitching, basically, which was the Eddie Richie knew in a nutshell. He beamed down at the phone, eyes watery.

But slowly, the further back Richie went, the more he started to notice one other category of pictures that kept cropping up. They were fewer and farther between than the photos inside restaurants or of receipts or tickets or whatever else, but slowly there was another, and another, until Richie realized it was something purposeful. A collection, captured by Eddie's camera phone.

Trains. There were pictures of trains saved to the photo roll—Richie didn’t think they were pictures Eddie had taken, they didn’t have the framing or dimensions of an iPhone photo.

Eddie had loved trains, when they were kids. Would go out to the trainyard and spot trains the way Stan used to spot birds.

Richie wondered if he had a little model train set as an adult. Maybe a project he kept in the basement, or a rec room. Somewhere he’d retreat after work or on weekends, to paint little figures, set up the town just the way he liked, fight other enthusiasts on eBay for the best steam engine or whatever the fuck. Maybe he had a little conductor hat that he wore when he was down there.

Richie’s eyes watered again, and Richie had to stop for a minute, shoving his glasses up to wipe under his eyes. Fuck, fuck. It was just a fucking _fantasy_ , Richie didn’t even know if it was _true_. Didn’t see any evidence of that: if Eddie had a model train set, he probably would have pictures of it, right? And there weren’t any, not yet.

Was it crazy that Richie wanted to buy Eddie a model train? Set him up a whole fucking room of trains, buy him every stupid accessory he needed, every tool. Fuck, Richie would do _research_ for this: would figure out what cabooses were the rare ones, or whatever, would track down little antique stores for some much sought after… railroad crossing sign, or whatever model train people cared about. Richie wanted to give Eddie everything he ever desired, because Eddie deserved it. He had to.

Richie’s thumb had kept scrolling back through Eddie’s few photos while the fantasy of being Eddie’s train sugar daddy unfolded in his mind. Now, it stuttered to a stop as Richie was abruptly confronted with the reality of how stupid all his desperate fantasies were.

Myra. It was… Richie had already seen this photo. It was the same one Eddie had showed Richie the night before, when they were drunk and Richie had bugged Eddie to “prove” he was married to a woman (Richie had been drunk, Richie got belligerent when he got drunk, and Richie also got horny, and needy, and maybe a little too aggressive with guys who said they were straight, but c’mon, how ‘straight’ was anyone, really…). Their wedding photo, presumably, Myra in a white dress beaming broadly, hair pinned up and looking pretty, though Richie had no real understanding of that sort of thing. Eddie was smiling too. Richie swallowed. Eddie was smiling. Too.

Frantically Richie scrolled further back. The photoroll came to an end.

Was that…? Richie scrolled forward in time, more slowly.

That was the only photo of Myra Eddie had in his phone. Just their wedding photo.

What the fuck did _that_ say about the man who owned this phone?

“Mr. Tozier?”

Richie jumped out of the chair before he could think, Eddie’s phone clattering onto the plastic seat. A doctor was standing before him in scrubs.

“Yes? What? Yes?”

“You’re here with Mr. Kaspbrak?”

Richie wanted to shake this woman. “ _Yes_.”

“He’s out of surgery,” she told him. “The first one. There will need to be more—he suffered a lot of internal damage. We had to remove his gallbladder, some sections of his intestines-”

“He’s alive?” Richie prompted, because, fuck: Eddie was the one who would care about all this. He’d want all the gory details and the exact centimeters of—fuck, did they say they cut out his fucking intestines??—whatever the fuck all else. Richie didn’t need to know all that. He just needed to know _one_ thing.

The surgeon nodded, smile tight. “Yes. But not out of the woods yet, I’m afraid. He’s still under anesthesia as we’re transfusing blood into him and another team is prepping for his next surgery.”

“Next…” Richie whispered weakly.

“We have an orthopedic surgeon who’s prepping now to work on the damage to his vertebrae. Your friend is in good hands.”

Richie’s stomach felt hollow. So Eddie was still split open on a surgeon’s table, Eddie was still bleeding his guts out, somewhere a few hundred yards where Richie stood.

The surgeon must have read this all over his face, because after a moment she added:

“I don’t want to make any promises, but we work from most dire to least. The worst of it is over. There’s a lot left, and much of it is… very serious. But his chances improve every hour that he stays with us.”

Compulsively Richie’s eyes darted to the clock on the wall. Noon. What time had they rushed in, Mike’s brutalized old station wagon squealing to a stop in the ambulance entrance? It had been light out. Beyond that, Richie had no idea. He could have been here six hours. He could have been here one. Time didn’t have any meaning when Eddie… _Eddie_...

He must have mumbled something because the surgeon nodded and left. He dropped down to his seat, ass crunching hard on something. Fuck! Richie jumped up, grabbing for Eddie’s phone. Thank fuck for that bulky Otterbox case—precious thing appeared undamaged. Hastily Richie thumbed in the passcode again. The photoroll came up, wedding photo of Myra front and center.

What kind of man had more photos of trains than of his wife?

Richie pushed down the vindictive glee that came with this knowledge. Maybe Eddie had a wallet with a dozen print outs of his beautiful wife. Maybe Eddie had a phone stolen or destroyed, and he hadn’t loaded this one with replacement photos yet (bullshit, Eddie would have his data backed up and backed up again, a dozen redundant ways). Maybe Eddie saw his wife so much, loved her so much, that he didn’t need a cheap photo to remember her by when the real thing was so much better.

It didn’t have to be that Eddie felt less for his wife than he did for trains. That was just Richie’s pathetic, broken heart trying to write the data in front of him to fit his perverted little fantasy.

What else would tell him about this forty-year-old stranger who was bleeding out Richie’s heart on an OR table a few thin drywall walls away? Richie exited out of the photoroll and flipped through the homescreen folders some more. There was a “games” folder, but it was so depressingly _Eddie_. New York Times _and_ Washington Post crossword app, several sudoku apps, and… DuoLingo.

DuoLingo was in his “games” folder. Richie opened it up.

Eddie had been trying to learn Spanish.

Richie pressed the phone to his nose and started crying afresh.

After a minute he backed out of the app, worried he’d fuck up and break Eddie’s accuracy streak or whatever the hell DuoLingo did. Richie mostly knew about the app from other stand-ups’ jokes. Not like he’d ever tried to undertake such self-improvement for himself.

As he reached the home screen again, a new message dropped down from a banner at the top of the screen. Since the phone was unlocked, Richie could read the preview this time.

**_Myra_ **

_Eddie, you’re scaring me. Did your phone die? Are you okay? Call me!_

Richie’s stomach twisted into knots. A concerned wife, wondering why her husband wasn’t replying to her texts. Eddie probably was dutiful about replying to his wife: he always had been with his mother. Myra had probably been expecting to speak to him that morning, and now it was gone noon. Anyone would be worried. It didn’t mean she was like _Sonia_. It didn’t have to.

Even though he felt bile rising to the back of his throat, mouth watering like it was getting ready to puke for the third time in as many days, Richie pressed his thumb to the _Messages_ app. It had a red number _thirty-five_ on the corner of it.

Myra’s name appeared at the very top, name bold and new message indicator next to her name.

There were no other names with unread messages, as far as Richie could see. A couple texts from him, other Losers, overnight last night—no, wait: night before last. Some names Richie didn’t recognize but appeared to be coworkers, by the generic messages visible in preview: _Sure thing, no problem. Right, thanks. I’ll forward you the e-mail. No, the Rx account was rejected, the one I approved was-_

Richie’s whole body winced as his finger very slowly pressed down on Myra’s name.

There was a sea of grey text, without interruption. Richie scrolled all the way back until the blue text of Eddie’s replies started to break up the grey bubbles.

Eddie: _It’ll be a couple more days. Tomorrow I’ll look at flights._

Myra: _Just let me know what your flight number is when you have it._

Eddie: _ok_

Myra: _I love you_

Eddie: _love you too_

Richie swallowed thickly. See? So what if Eddie had a bunch of pictures of trains on his phone and only one of his wife? It didn’t _mean_ anything. They apparently had the kind of relationship where they talked to each other all the time, and they were completely coordinated as to each other’s travel plans and everything.

Above the next message was the time and date stamp from yesterday, 8:40AM. There weren’t any more replies from Eddie after that: obviously he’d been too busy getting the shit scared out of him running around Derry and-

Richie scrolled down and read through Myra’s messages

_Morning, dear. Let me know when your flight back is._

_Cheryl at the bank dyed her hair brown from that awful bottle blonde. It doesn’t suit her any better._

_The store is out of your vanilla almond milk creamer. Should I get the plain one?_

_I got one of the plain ones; I’ll try again this weekend._

_The Johnson’s want to have us over Friday. You’ll be back by then, right?_

_Hope everything is going ok._

_Eddie bear, are things that busy?_

_I hope your phone didn’t die. Did you remember to bring a charger? I could overnight you your charger._

_Shop called. Two weeks before we get the car back._

_Did you have a good day?_

And then, from this morning:

_Eddie, where’d you go?_

_Eddie, call me._

_Eddie, are you okay?_

Richie’s throat tightened again, and he compulsively tried swallowing around the lump. It wasn’t helping.

What was he supposed to do? Should he call Myra? Let her know her husband was seriously injured and that’s why he hadn’t called back? Should he introduce himself? Richie Tozier, semi-famous working comedian, was your husband’s best friend growing up. But then how would he explain Eddie not talking about him for twenty years? How would he explain that her husband knew a minor celebrity and it had never come up?

And that now, this minor celebrity was sitting with husband in a hospital in the middle of rural Maine while her husband struggled to _live_ , under the scalpel of a team of surgeons. Would she come here? Would she fly out, insist to be at Eddie’s side? Surely she was his emergency contact: had someone contacted her yet? Had they run his insurance and found her, her contact info? Did Richie need to be that person? _Could_ Richie be that person? Didn’t she have a right to _know_???

“Mr. Tozier?”

Richie jolted awake. He was clutching Eddie’s phone: it had gone dark. Blearily Richie lifted the phone to his face, the time flashing in large font in front of his eyes: _1:45_.

Fuck. He had fallen asleep. Myra’s text messages to Eddie had stressed Richie out so bad that he just… passed the fuck out. Like a toddler.

But now there was a doctor in front of him, in scrubs. Richie jumped to his feet and wiped at his face, acting like he wasn’t just caught sleeping while his best friend was clinging to fucking life, splayed open on an operating table like something from Area 51.

“Yeah, doc, Eddie? How’s… is it Eddie?”

The surgeon nodded. “I’m the orthopedic surgeon. We were working on stabilizing his vertebrae: four of them were basically shattered. Luckily the spinal cord looks like it’s mostly intact, although there is some swelling. When he wakes up he likely won’t be able to move his legs, but hopefully that’s temporary and he’ll regain his mobility as the swelling goes down. As it is, we rebuilt the damaged vertebrae and put him in a back brace. He shouldn’t try to walk or even sit up under his own power for several weeks.”

“But he’s… he’s okay?”

The surgeon nodded. “He’s through the worst of it. He’s being transferred to the ICU now for observation. A lot could go wrong, Mr. Tozier: don’t relax just yet. But at the moment, given the amount of damage he came in with, the prognosis… isn’t bad.”

“‘Isn’t bad,’” Richie repeated flatly. The surgeon shrugged.

“He had a four-inch-by-four-inch hole punched through his torso. ‘Not bad’ is the best you’re getting, for now. And even that is just short of a miracle.”

The surgeon proffered his hand and Richie reached out and took it, shaking it vigorously. “Fuck, hey, don’t get me wrong: I’ll take it, doc.”

“A nurse will let you know when we transfer him to a room where he can have visitors. It’ll be a while.” He glanced at Richie’s… Richie. “If you wanted to get some rest, now’s the time.”

Bull-fucking-shit. Richie had _just_ got Eddie back. He wasn’t about to lose him again. If this waiting room was as close as he could be to Eddie right now, then that was exactly where he was going to be. When they told him he could be in a room with Eddie, then that was where Richie was going to be. He wasn’t going to be an inch further from Eddie than was absolutely necessary. Not now, and not for the foreseeable future, either.

When the surgeon left Richie collapsed back down into the waiting room chair, head dropping between his knees. He pressed his hands to his head, slowly raking through his hair with shaking fingers. A laugh burst out of him. And then another. He lifted his head with a gasp of surprise, eyes wet. Okay. Okay. Eddie was going to be _okay_. He was alive, he was even going to be able to walk again—maybe, someday, with a lot of hard work, but fuck, it wasn’t like Eddie _ever_ avoided hard work, right? The stupid fuck spent half his life making everything harder for himself than it needed to be, he could grit his teeth through some PT and come out the other side of it running fucking marathons, probably.

Another gasp tore its way from Richie’s throat, and he raked his fingers through his hair again. Okay. Now it was just… time to wait. They weren’t letting anyone back to see Eddie for another few hours, they had said. Just in case ( _don’t think about it don’t think about what “in case” meant it wasn’t anything it was just SOP_ -). Richie’s hands clenched and twisted and re-clenched around Eddie’s phone case. He looked down at them, studying his fingers as they grasped at his only lifeline to Eddie. They were covered in blood.

 _He_ was covered in blood, still. Fuck, his glasses were flecked with it. He hadn’t washed it off yet, because… But now Eddie was recovering in an ICU room, out of the worst of the surgeries, just waiting for time and medicine to work their magic.

Bill and Ben were still out getting something to eat, and they had opted to walk to leave the car with Mike. They would be back sometime, but no telling when. Bev and Mike had gone to shower, change, and pick up necessities from the Derry Inn, so they’d probably be a while longer. Especially considering that Bev’s shower would probably take a good hour, to get her looking some semblance of normal and not like she’d just stepped out of a community theater version of Carrie: The Musical.

Shoving both phones in his pockets, Richie slouched off to the bathroom to clean himself up as best he could. His leather jacket was… fucking gone, he didn’t even know where. It had gone back with Eddie, when the ER nurses had hauled him onto a stretcher and rushed him back, out of sight. Probably trashed by now. Sighing, Richie yanked off his yellow button-up shirt and shoved it in the trash. It was as unsalvageable as the rest of his clothes. At least his undershirt looked roughly presentable—not as much of Eddie’s blood had gotten on it, through the jacket and the button-up. Richie turned on the faucet and leaned forward with palms wrapped around the edge of the counter, staring at himself in the mirror.

Well he looked like shit. There were deep bags under his eyes, visible even beneath his cracked glasses. He had a three-day scruff going on, rapidly turning from “stubble” to “beard.” His hair was lank, receding hairline all the more noticeable for it. The lighting in the ER bathroom wasn’t exactly primo, but he was pretty sure the ashen pallor of his skin wasn’t entirely to blame on the fluorescents.

His hands were stained with Eddie’s dried blood. Richie jammed down on the soap dispenser a half-dozen times, lathering up his hands violently. Now that he was looking at it, now that he acknowledged it, Richie suddenly, desperately needed to be _rid_ of it. The sink turned red with Eddie’s blood, soap foaming pink over his fingers. Richie scraped under his nails, along his cuticles, trying to scrub the last bits of Eddie’s injury, of Eddie’s _wound_ from his skin.

He had to return to the soap dispenser over and over again, lathering up his arms, picking dried flecks of blood and who the fuck knows what else from his arm hair, from his wrists. He dropped his glasses into the sink, scrubbing the blood from them and trying not to crack them more—he was pretty fucked if that lens decided to give up the ghost completely. When he chanced a glance up in the mirror, he paled. There were flecks of blood on his cheeks, on his nose, his forehead.

Behind down, Richie splashed water on his face, grabbing for paper towels so he could scrub hard. The shitty standard industrial paper towels were shit for this, both too smooth and painfully stiff all at the same time, water turning it limp like a piece of notebook paper. Still, Richie had done more with less, in dingy bars and running on speed and cigarettes, and eventually when he looked back in the mirror there was no more of Eddie’s blood flecking his face.

Okay. Okay. Richie gave himself a once-over as he grabbed more paper towels and scrubbed himself dry. Arms, wrists, hands. Fingernails. His fingernails were still rimmed in pink, but he didn’t think there was much he could do about that short of soaking them in acetone. Face, glasses. Brown shirt was passable, yellow button-up was trashed. His pants… well fuck, look, he’d just spent a good eight hours traipsing through the sewers and getting his ass handed to him by an interdimensional murder clown. You could probably grow a Lisa’s-teeth level civilization in his damn jeans pockets (Semen + sea people= sea-ciety. Heh), but you know, other than that, he was doing _shockingly_ well. His best friend had just been speared through and Richie had to hold his intestines in and here he was, fucking standing, and… and clean… and…

Richie slid down against the counter, face buried in his hands as he sobbed. Fuck, Eddie, _Eddie_. His Eddie, _Eddie_ , he’d- Richie moaned, voice breaking with his heart as he tried desperately to hold himself together from the outside. Like if he pressed his palms into his eyes enough, if he leaned hard enough against the counter, if he squeezed his eyes shut with enough force, somehow he would crack apart like an egg from the inside out, spilling everything that had been _Richie Tozier_ out of the fragile shell of lewd jokes and performative heterosexuality. Richie wrapped his arms around his chest and moaned, breaking juddering with every inhale. _Eddie, Eddie_.

Eventually… nothing happened. Richie cried, and he wasn’t interrupted, and Bev didn’t burst in to tell him Eddie was awake, and the PA didn’t announce the death of the small, beautiful man in ICU bed fourteen, and Eddie’s phone didn’t ring with a call from his wife. Eventually nothing happened, except Richie stopped crying, because it had to happen eventually. Richie splashed some cold water on his face, patted himself dry, then shoved his glasses on again. He looked like he’d been crying. But he wasn’t covered in blood. Not as much, at least. That was a start.

So now it was just Richie and his phone again, alone in the ER waiting room. Well: his and Eddie’s phone.

Easily Richie typed the passcode into Eddie’s phone, muscle memory guiding him through the motions. Ugh, it opened straight away to Myra’s last message, where Richie had left it when he’d fallen into his stress-nap. Quickly Richie closed out of that, not sure what the fuck to do or say to that woman, or what Eddie would _want_ him to do or say.

Absently Richie thumbed open Chrome, maybe half thinking he’d catch up on the news, maybe sign into his twitter or something, see what half-baked apology his social media manager had sent out on his behalf. He wasn’t even really thinking about the fact that it was _Eddie’s_ Chrome until the page loaded.

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Richie blinked. Well. That was… something.

Had Eddie been searching this _before_ he came to Derry, or was this a new development? Did this have to do with the mind-whammy: Eddie got his memories back and was like, oh, _shit_ , I’m married to my mother? Or had there been trouble in the Kaspbrak household that had nothing to do with Derry (with Richie).

Richie thumbed at the back button, like that would give him some insight. If he could see the last few things Eddie had been searching—not to be a total snoop, or anything: if he saw some freaky-deaky porn he’d back right out, he wasn’t looking for _that_ —maybe it would give him a clue as to _when_ exactly Eddie had been searching for a divorce attorney.

_How do you know if you’re gay_

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Hol. Ee. Fuck.

“Richie?”

He didn’t even get the time to freak out (what _was_ that?! Was it Eddie? Was he… was _he_?! Why was he! Why now? Was it the memory thing? Was there something, was there a _memory-_ holy _shit_. _Had_ Eddie-?! When he was a teen? Was there _someone_ -?! Oh, fuck, Richie was going to hurl-) because Bill and Ben were making their way through the ER waiting room with bags of food. Richie dropped Eddie’s phone, finger slamming on the side button to lock it as he did.

“Tell me you’ve got something beige, fried, and salted,” Richie said as he stood. “Because that’s the only thing I’m going to be able to get it up for right now.”

“How’s he doing?” Ben asked as he passed Richie a Wendy’s bag. Fuck yeah. Richie pawed through it and started shoveling fries in his mouth.

“Out of the worst surgeries,” Richie explained around mouthfuls of shredded potato. “In the ICU under observation. Should be tap-dancing out of here in no time.”

“Right, t-t-tap dancing,” Bill quipped. He passed Richie a soda from the drink carrier. “You liked root beer.”

“Fuck, I do,” Richie confirmed. “I can’t believe you remembered that.”

“Sure, you and Edd-” Ben stopped, smile falling off his face the second it formed.

Richie sucked hard at the root beer, nearly waterboarding himself in the process.

“He hated root beer,” Bill picked up the thread. “You were always sw-sw-switching your drinks, trying to tr-tr-trick him into drinking it.”

“One time he dumped the entire thing over your head,” Ben commented with a soft chuckle. His eyes kept flickering to Richie, like _is this okay? Can we talk like this, yet_?

“So you’re saying I should save this and give it to him as his first drink when he wakes up, huh?”

Bill laughed. “Maybe wait until we’re sure he’s strong enough to d-d-defend himself.”

“That’ll be as soon as the anesthesia wears off and you know it,” Richie said. “Dope burns out of his system and Eddie’ll be sitting straight up in bed, critique their fucking… whatever, stitching technique, and the sterility of the gauze, and what the fuck ever else.”

“Still,” Ben said with a smile. “Maybe lay off the pranks for a day. Two, if you think you could stand it.”

Richie mock-rolled his eyes, mustering a light-hearted tone he wasn’t at all feeling. “Jackass landed himself in the hospital just so he’d get your guys’ sympathy, is what it is. I’m not going to treat him with kid gloves just because he got himself-” Richie choked the last word off, eyes hot, throat tight. He shoved some more fries in his mouth like that would solve things. It kind of did, for a minute: at least it gave him an excuse to stop talking. He drank his root beer and remembered a dozen summer days spent pulling pranks on Eddie, and how much sweeter the drink tasted back then when it was accompanied by Eddie screaming bloody murder in his ear.

Bill belched and patted at Richie’s leg. “When d’you figure they’ll be b-b-back?”

Richie shrugged and glanced at his wrist. “Let’s see, they left at half-past fuck-if-I-know, and now it’s quarter-til who-fucking-knows-when-”

“Alright, alright,” Bill griped. He shifted in the plastic ER seat. “Just wouldn’t mind g-g-getting out of these clothes.”

Richie grimaced. He couldn’t argue with Bill there.

There were sports on the TV, which Ben and Bill both fell into watching, hypnotized by baseballs siren call like everyone else within range of the NESN. Carefully, angling the phone away from a stray glance away from Bill or Ben, Richie unlocked Eddie’s phone and hurried back into his Chrome history. So he was snooping, okay? So he was a full-on snoop. Look, his best friend was apparently going through a midlife sexuality crisis and a divorce, and that was _before_ he’d had half his organs stabbed out of his chest: Eddie could use all the help he could _get_. And the only way Richie could do that was by knowing as much as possible about the tough little bastard who was too mean to die.

So Eddie had been thinking maybe he was a late-in-life-gay, or something, and then after _that_ crisis had apparently settled on something sure enough to start looking up divorce lawyers in the metro area. What could Eddie have been looking at before, then…

 _Richie Tozier Stand-Up_.

Richie winced. Ah, shit. He knew he had all sorts of terrible gay jokes and bits in his act. Did something he said strike a chord with Eddie? Reveal too much of an unspoken, unacknowledged truth? Pinpointed something that had been wrong for so long, a discordant note in Eddie’s psyche that he hadn’t known the song it fit into until his memories all came rushing back?

Depended on which bit he’d been watching, of course. The first link was purpled, showing that Eddie had clicked on it at some point. Richie winced, knowing that clip. It was one of his more popular bits, but fuck it was stupid. And sexist. Great. After making sure his phone was muted (of course it was), Richie clicked on it, out of a sort of morbid desire to follow Eddie’s digital footsteps wherever they had last tread.

The Chrome app flipped away, YouTube app sliding in to replace it. Richie’s stupid fucking act stated playing, which he knew well enough, so he tossed that down to the bottom of the screen and went to Eddie’s YouTube homepage to take a peek at his most recently played.

_Richie Tozier Performs Snooki @ The Red Door Comedy Room_

_Richie Tozier is a Genius Funny Moments_

_25 Funniest Richie Tozier Impressions_

_Roast of James Franco – Richie Tozier – Uncensored_

_Richie Tozier SNL Monologue_

_Richie Tozier Breaking for 10 Straight Minutes_

_The best of: Richie Tozier_

Well that was fucking adorable, wasn’t it? Eddie had gone on a binge of his best (worst) material. Richie was fucking _honored_.

And, shit: there were _plenty_ of gay jokes in this spread of videos. The James Franco roast in _particular_ was basically one long riff about beej’s and anal fingering. His impressions _definitely_ contained some Liberace or Elton John or Freddie Mercury shit—actually, yeah, there was _definitely_ a Freddie bit in there, and it was… pretty fucking crude. Shit.

On the other hand, if some of Richie’s worst fucking jokes led Eddie to reevaluate his entire sexuality and figure out how to divorce his wife, maybe it wasn’t so bad, you know? Don’t get him wrong: his _material_ was bad. Fucking awful. But maybe, ends-justify-the-means sort of thing, right? When the YouTube app autoplayed the next bit, Richie flipped the app closed. He was playing with Eddie’s phone because he was looking for shades of _Eddie_ , not because he was on a narcissistic jerk-off stint.

A half hour later Richie relaxed enough, thanks to Bill and Ben sitting with him, to doze off sitting in the hard plastic ER waiting room chair. But then he was snapping awake, some set of footsteps or voices registering in his dulled awareness as _important_ or _different_.

It was Bev and Mike, looking a lot fresher than they’d looked a couple hours ago. Rare was the day that Richie craved a shower but seeing Bev with her pink-scrubbed skin, all the gallons of blood scrubbed away, Richie couldn’t think of anything he wanted _more_ than a shower right now.

Well: he could think of exactly _one_ thing.

There were hugs all around, and then Mike was passing his car keys off to Bill. Bev handed Richie a tote bag—one of those reusable grocery bags, actually. There was a change of clothes in there for him and he smiled wetly at Bev.

“I could kiss you full on the mouth, Marsh.”

Richie registered Ben eyeing him up.

Bev smiled benevolently at him. “Please don’t: I didn’t see a toothbrush in your bathroom.”

“That’s because these are dentures.” He chomped his teeth together. “Give me a second, honey, I’ll slip them out and we can get to necking.”

“Go clean yourself up.” Bev shoved him towards the ER bathroom with a laugh. “You smell like a sewer.”

“Can’t imagine why…” Richie mused. But he took the bag gratefully and darted back into the ER bathroom that he was getting way too familiar with.

He stripped down to his underwear in front of the sinks and gave himself a whore’s bath. His feet were pretty much _black_ , ugh, and now he was standing with those feet bare in an ER bathroom. Eddie would have a _fit_. Eddie would pop a fucking _blood vessel_. The size of Eddie’s conniption would only be viewable from deep space, because it’d be so fucking astronomical. Richie giggled helplessly to himself, fighting the urge to give in and let those giggles become yet more sobs. He hopped from one foot to the other, scrubbing his feet down with industrial brown paper towels, like they were remotely suited to the job. Quilted really _did_ make a difference.

Eventually he was as clean as he was going to get while still in a hospital, unless a very frisky nurse suddenly invited him back for a sponge bath or something. Putting on fresh underwear, jeans, and a t-shirt (sexy green M&M with a mistranslated _EAT BROWN JOYOUS_ plastered across it) with a hideous Hawaiian on top. The feeling of clean, dry clothes against his skin wrenched a groan of relief out of him. Richie hadn’t realized exactly how uncomfortable he’d been until that discomfort had been taken away. Almost like a metaphor, or something.

Richie jammed his dirty clothes into the grocery tote Bev had brought his fresh clothes in. He would probably end up just chucking them out entirely at this point, but.

Unfortunately he hadn’t brought two pairs of boots. Rather than shove his fresh, dry socks into his still-wet and decidedly disgusting boots, Richie carried them with him out of the bathroom, stocking feet good enough for now. When they called him back to see Eddie he’d suck it up and put them back on, but for now he was just sitting in a chair. He didn’t need boots on to do _that_.

Bev grinned at him as he threw himself down in a sprawl of limbs into the seat next to her. Immediately he moaned and flopped onto her, getting his arms everywhere. She laughed and shoved futilely at him. She gave in eventually, settling for stroking his hair. Richie closed his eyes and pretended not to lean into the touch, craving the intimate contact. Fuck, he loved his Losers. He’d been missing them all _so much_ , his entire life. If only he had known what he’d been missing. _Who_ he’d been missing. Maybe he wouldn’t be so… _him_.

“Do we know when we can see him?”

Richie shook his head, keeping his eyes closed. Maybe he could nod off again. That would be nice. Make the time pass a little faster, and relieve some of the bone-heavy _exhaustion_ from his limbs. Soothe some of the scratchiness in his eyes and throat, maybe make him feel like the world wasn’t crashing in on his head every second. Of course Bev’s presence helped soothe the latter problem, at least.

“Bill said he’s out of surgery.”

“For now,” Richie confirmed. He yawned against Bev’s shoulder.

He must have dozed off for a couple minutes, because he came to his senses again an uncertain amount of time later when Bev shifted beneath him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, straightening up with a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Don’t,” Bev told him. She smiled at him with bloodshot eyes. “We’re all exhausted. I don’t even know how you’ve sat here for this long.”

“I’m not leaving him,” Richie snapped, more harshly than he meant to. That was the sleep-deprivation. He sighed and wiped a hand up his face, knocking his glasses to his forehead. “Sorry,” he mumbled again. “Sorry. I just mean… I gotta stay. Just-”

“It’s okay.” Hesitantly, Bev reached a hand out to him. She drew it back, but then steeled herself and sat it on his thigh. Immediately Richie covered it with his own and squeezed it, trying to silently communicate to her _Yes, stay here, yes, I need you, yes, you’re wanted_. “He’s your best friend. I get it.”

“Stan was my best friend.” It slipped out before Richie could even think of it. A sharp pain of longing and _loss_ stabbed him in the gut, nearly doubling him over at the sharpness of it. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried again. “And then you, Miss Scarlet, of course.”

“I’m just the only person you knew who always had cigarettes,” Bev reminded him. “And you were a mooch.”

“I paid you back!” Richie whined. “In stolen Tozier vodka, which my mom eventually figured out and I tried to blame on my sister, which got me a beating my face will _never_ forget. From my sister, not my mom.” Richie rubbed at his jaw. “Julie packed a _mean_ right hook.”

“It was always different with you and Eddie, though,” Bev reminded him.

“Yeah well that was then,” Richie said. “You’re all here too. Unless you’re just here for _my_ winning personality, in which case I can direct you to the psych ward; I know I saw a sign around here somewhere…”

“It was now, too,” Bev pointed out, ignoring all the other nonsense that had spilled from Richie’s trashmouth. “You guys were on the same page from dinner. You both wanted to leave, you both thought we shouldn’t split up. When Pennywise separated us, me and Ben had to save each other, and Eddie-”

“Any of you would have done that,” Richie insisted, sweating. “Eddie just had the fencepost.”

Mike smiled as he made his way back from the nurses’ desk. “They say he’s still ‘under observation’ and don’t have an estimate on when he’ll be moved to a room.” He nodded at Richie. “Do you want to go back to the Inn? Take a nap?”

Stubbornly Richie shook his head. “What, and let you take all the credit when it’s your ugly mug he sees first? Back off, Mike. It’s my glory to hog.”

Mike held up his hands as he took the seat on the other side of Bev. “Alright, alright! Didn’t mean to get in the way of you taking credit for being the most dedicated.”

“And don’t you even _try_.”

The conversation ebbed and flowed as the three of them sat and waited for some news, any news (good news, _only_ good news). Eventually Richie pulled out Eddie’s phone again, leaning to the side so Bev couldn’t see the screen if she were to oh-so-casually glance over. Richie unlocked it and chewed his lip, wondering what to check next. All pretense was out the window, at this point. Richie wanted to see what the hell else Eddie had been up to on his phone; especially in those last hours before-

No. It was fine. Eddie was fine. He had made it through surgery after surgery like a fucking _champ_. Next doc that came out was going to tell him Eddie was ready for visitors. That’s how this story went.

Richie double-clicked the home button, pulling up the most recently used apps. The first half dozen were the apps Richie had just been browsing, of course: G-Mail, Chrome, Messages, DuoLingo, Photos. Bank apps, weather app. But then, okay, here’s something: Notes app. Richie clicked on it, mostly expecting it to be a grocery list or something (Eddie would use his Reminders app to do that though, wouldn’t he? Richie made a note to find out, because suddenly he wanted to _know_ , he wanted to catalogue everything Eddie did and how he did it, how he lived his day-to-day life). But the app pulled up a list of note titles, and the very top one, edited less than twenty-four hours ago, said:

FOR THERAPY

Well.

Richie chewed at his bottom lip. It would be an invasion of privacy. On the other hand, he was pretty sure Eddie wouldn’t have wanted him to find out he’d been… going through a sexuality crisis and was thinking about divorcing his wife. The cat wasn’t just out of the bag on that one, it had caught the canary _and_ got the cream.

Well. Might as well for a sheep as a lamb, as his folksiest of great-aunts used to say. He clicked on that first note.

At first it was ramblings and sentence fragments that, once decoded, seemed to be Eddie trying to figure out how to explain The Derry Trip to his therapist. Smart.

_Went to…??_

_Reunion????_

_Friends in middle school_

_Friend needed help???_

_Stan…_

_Stan. Then, reunion. Mike called us up and told us about… Stan. Came back to Derry for memorial thing?_

Not bad, Eddie. Not that Eddie was ever a dumbass, but one thing he was better at than even Richie was lying. When you had a mom like Sonia, you learned how to weave stories and hang excuses like the smoothest Music Man. Looks like Eddie hadn’t lost the touch.

Did he lie to Myra like that? Were his old habits alive and well in his current marriage? That sure would be a reason to start consider if that was the healthiest relationship and looking for the nearest exits. Richie turned back to the note, where Eddie had typed a quick line between the expositional thoughts and the next:

_\----------_

_How do people know they’re gay?_

_No sex in _____

_(Fuck, when???/ That December, before Christmas? No, shit, that was 2014. … Fuck)_

_Just touch-starved._

_Crave physical intimacy_

_++Emotional intimacy?_

_Sucking dick is all hypothetical right now what if I get down there and I don’t like it?_

_Everyone has dreams – sex dreams about dick doesn’t = gay??_

_Jerking off about it ???_

Richie put the phone down and did his best not to look like he was losing his entire mind.

Then he picked the phone up and kept reading.

_What about the opposite?_

_Sex with women: good????_

_Sex with Myra: …._

_I could finish, so?_

_Not anymore. Can’t think about her. But, it’s the memories, right?_

_Sex with Myra: can’t do it anymore_

_What about other women?_

_Shannon, MBA program: okay. BJs good._

_She liked it from behind. Better for me that way. Gay??_

_If my therapist tells me to hire a FUCKING GIGALO-_

Richie had to put the phone down again, but it was mostly to shove his glasses up to his forehead so he could cry-laugh into his palms. Oh, Jesus fuck. He loved Eddie so much. He loved this fucking disaster of a human being, a ball of neuroticisms more tangled than a cat’s ball of yarn that’d been through the wash. He thought too fast and talked faster and how did his therapist ever get a word in edgeways—did he? Or did he not even try? Because Eddie would figure it out himself, if you let him talk long enough. Eddie’s motormouth was the only thing that could rival Richie’s trashmouth, and fuck, Richie loved it. Richie loved every thousand-words-per-minute of it. What an annoying little shit. What a love of Richie’s entire God-damned life.

There was another paragraph break-type line, and then a lot of line spaces between the last line and the next one. Richie had to scroll to pull more than the barely-visible top of the next line center-screen:

\---------------------------

_I knew his face._

_Middle school: formative years/develop sexual attraction_

_Bill’s wife looks like Bev_

_“Types” just imprinted of who you liked when you were 12._

_So just because my type is HIM doesn’t mean I WANT HIM, specifically, right?_

_Just because Bev imprinted on Bill and that’s his TYPE doesn’t mean he actually wants Bev, right? He loves his wife. Bev just started his TYPE._

_He’s straight anyway. – explain the stand up?_

_\-----_

_AM I gay????_

_Need to test it_

_Fuck._

_Does porn count or do I have to do it in person?_

_Fuck he looks like he doesn’t wear underwear and shaves once a week and he uses whiskey as mouthwash_

_Couldn’t stop staring at his arms_

_Adam’s apple_

_Held his hand—arm wrestling. Like…._

_Like…….._

_fuck_

Richie scrolled back up. Read through it again.

Scrolled back up. Read it another time.

Scrolled back up. What… What was Eddie…

He’d arm-wrestled Richie.

He… He did stand-up. Stand up with lots of shit straight jokes.

They’d know each other when they were twelve.

What…

Scrolled back up.

Abruptly Richie’s stomach lurched and he ran for the growing-way-too-familiar ER bathroom. He only made it as far as the sinks before he puked. Ugh, big fucking mistake: half a Wendy’s burger and fries combo came up, stained brown from the root beer. Shamefully Richie grabbed some paper towels and scooped up the chunkiest parts of it, trying not to gag again through the process. His upper lip was wet with sweat.

Fuck, fuck. What… What the _fuck_ was _that_? What the fuck had Eddie been _thinking_?

Because it couldn’t be what it sounded like. It couldn’t be, because Richie wanted it so badly, Richie never even thought about it being true, not even in his wildest fantasies. So it couldn’t be that.

But… it… it _looked_ like…

Richie’s stomach churned again and he swallowed thickly. No. No. There was no way. It couldn’t be true, because if it was true, then… then Eddie could… but Eddie _couldn’t_. And it didn’t matter anyway, because Eddie was barely _alive_ , the doctors didn’t even know his _condition_ , he was still in the ICU held together with duct tape and a prayer, someone else’s blood running through his veins, half his organs sliced out and spine spackled together like a fucking stacked stone garden wall. So it didn’t matter. None of it mattered, next to Eddie getting better, next to Eddie _living_. Richie didn’t matter. What mattered was Eddie.

He cleaned up the sink as best he could, running the water to try and get rid of the remnants. As the water ran Richie splashed some on his face, then wiped himself down with some of those brutal paper towels. He replaced his glasses and checked himself out in the mirror. Sallow skin, greasy hair, stubble heading towards a beard, eyes so bloodshot he looked like an extra on _The Walking Dead_.

Yeah: let Eddie see him like this and see how his hypothetical sexuality stood up to ugly reality.

But then, when Richie stepped back out of the bathroom, he was greeted by the sight of a Losers reunion happening in the waiting room. Bill and Ben were back from the Inn, cleaned up and in a fresh change of clothes. They were all chatting together, but then Bev and Ben split off, having their own conversation in low tones. As Richie watched, Bev ducked her head, and Ben ducked his. Then Bev stepped closer, tilted her chin up, said something. With a faint smile Ben said something back, and then they were kissing.

And it all looked so damn easy. And Richie’s heart clenched in his chest watching them, a couple of middle school almost-weres finding each other again and seizing their happiness when they saw the chance.

Richie’s hand clenched around Eddie’s phone in its ridiculously huge casing. A sudden calm went through him, like he’d only felt a few times back in his early days of stand-up. Back when he’d been writing his own material and just starting out, that second before he went on stage. He’d get so nervous, he’d puke, he’d think he was about to pass out, and it would ratchet up and up and up until, suddenly, like a plane hitting thirty thousand feet, it all just… went quiet. The blood rushing in his ears, his own racing thoughts, the roar of the crowd. It would all just snap to silence, and he was there, in that moment, sure of what he was about to do.

He was sure of what he was about to do.

Though, oh, shit.

How was he supposed to have this conversation with Eddie _without_ mentioning he’d been snooping through his phone?

* * *

The familiar numbers 699238 practically tapped themselves out on Eddie’s phone, muscle memory guiding his fingers through the motions more than conscious thought. He thumbed his way down the “Groceries” list in the “Reminders” app, looking through the products until he confirmed it didn’t have what he wanted. At the bottom he typed

_Trix_

_Chex Mix_

_Cookie dough ice cream_

“Richie?”

Guiltily Richie snapped the phone off and tossed it across the counter. He miscalculated and threw it with _way_ too much force, and it was skidding its way over the electric cooktop of their range when Eddie stepped into the kitchen. Hurriedly Richie leaned against the counter, school his expression into something innocent. Eddie took in the scene before him with a warry look.

“Richie?” he repeated, only this time he wasn’t calling out for him, but _accusing_ him. The traitor.

“Ready to go?” Richie asked. “I’ve got the keys.” He twirled his keys in his fingers.

Eddie squinted at him as he slowly tracked his way across the Tuscan tile floors to their range oven. He picked his phone up, examining it for cracks. Finding none he unlocked it. Shit, shit. Richie hadn’t backed out of the app. He’d been hoping to have a little more time…

“Richie?” Eddie asked one final time. This time it was starting an argument.

What a wonder, that he could say a single word and make it mean all those different things. Richie should suggest he get into acting or something. Anything, to distract him right this moment.

“Hey you know I think the farmers’ market is on our way, if you want to get the fresh…” Richie trailed off as Eddie held his phone out. The three added grocery items on the list glowed out of Eddie’s phone, silently accusing Richie. “…vegetables?” Richie tried.

“What did I say about adding junk food to the list?”

“I’m _dying_ , Eds. Man cannot live on kale alone!”

“We _have_ snacks, Richie-”

“Kind bars do _not_ count as snacks, Edward!”

“What did you even think would happen? I would automatically buy Chex Mix just because it’s on the list?”

Richie grinned sheepishly. Eddie glared.

“Don’t fuck with my phone, asshole.”

Well, Richie knew _that_ was just posturing, at least. Which was his cue that they were done fighting about this and moving on to whatever their next fight would be.

“Eddie, my love…” Richie stepped forward into Eddie’s space, wrapping him up in his arms. Eddie kept _trying_ to glare up at him, but most failing. Succeeding a little bit, though, because Eddie was nothing if not a professional glare-er. “You don’t mean that.”

“I fucking said it, didn’t I?” Eddie grumbled. But he was already leaning up, and Richie was leaning down, and they kissed, soft and slow and sweet, because they had all the time in the world on Saturday morning, puttering around going grocery shopping and stopping by the farmers’ market for some fresh strawberries and arguing over if pancakes were healthy or not.

When they broke apart Eddie’s eyes were softer, though he didn’t _mean_ for them to be, Richie could tell. Richie smiled down at him and waited with bated breath, not daring to ruin the moment.

“What if I got chocolate chips for pancakes?” Eddie finally conceded.

“And Chex Mix.”

“Dark chocolate,” Eddie countered, expression worryingly evil.

“Sorry, okay, okay, semi-sweet, I’m sorry, please, babe.”

Eddie pretended to consider it until Richie bent down to pepper his face with kisses. Eddie snuffled indignantly and turned his head so he could capture Richie’s lips with his own.

“Deal,” he agreed.

Richie kissed him again on the nose for good measure.

“You fuck-”

But Richie had already grabbed Eddie’s phone from the counter while he was distracted and darted off with the car keys. “Well what are you waiting for, slow poke? I thought we had a schedule to keep or something. Chop chop.”

Eddie swore at him the entire way to their car, until he grabbed his phone back from Richie to plug it into the car charger. Richie was happy to let him have it.


End file.
